Twelve and a Half Hours
by Taste of Violets
Summary: Wilson waits a dozen hours for House to wake up, and he still can't say what he needs to say. Pre-slash, based on "97 Seconds." Complete.
1. 9:17 PM to 9:35 PM

12½ Hours

By taste of violets

Disclaimer: I don't own House. It belongs to FOX, David Shore, et al.

Editor's Note: Many thanks to callmejude of LiveJournal's lying_ink, who beta-read this story after inspiring it with her own lovely fic "The Hardest Part of This."

This fic takes place parallel to the events of the episode "97 Seconds" (episode 4x3). Please don't read it if you haven't seen the episode, because not only will the fic not make much sense, but I'd hate to spoil a good episode for you.

This is part one of four.

::

_[9:17 PM.]_

You run all the way through the corridors and up the stairs to his room, even though in the back of your mind you're aware that running won't make a difference; that it's too late to undo what's been done. But rational analysis lost the battle to panic the minute you answered your phone and heard the news from Cuddy, and you can no longer think clearly over the pounding of your heart. So you're charging up the staircase, sprinting down the hallway—you nearly pass his room, then realize your mistake—you skid to a halt, spin around, stumble into the room to see him lying, motionless, on the bed.

And it's then, only then, when you see him lying there, that you realize how stupid you've been.

Because oh God, it hurts for you to see him there, to see him ashen and scarred and still, and to think that it's only _now_ that you're running to his side, _now_ that you're sinking into the chair beside him, _now_ that you're wondering if you could have stopped him from doing this to himself.

You're an idiot.

_Now_ is far too late.

_[9:21 PM.]_

You can't tear your eyes away from his face until you hear the door open, and you turn around to see Cuddy there. She starts to enter the room, checking herself before coming any farther. Standing near the doorway, she gives you one of her trademark long, sympathetic gazes. Unexpectedly, you find yourself thinking that she looks very much like somebody's mother.

"I called you as soon as I heard," she says. "I thought you might know already."

You shake your head.

Her look of sympathy turns into a look of pity. You feel a sudden, aimless hatred flare up inside you, then sputter out with equal abruptness as you turn your eyes away from her.

"You said he did it—" you start to ask, then realize your voice is a croak. You clear your throat, embarrassed, and try to sound more like a doctor. "You said he did it in his office?"

"That's where they found him," Cuddy says, and instantly your mind races to call up a dozen images of all the times you go to his office, or he barges into yours, on the average workday. Why weren't you there this time? Why couldn't you have thought to stop by the one time he needed you?

You realize Cuddy is talking and force yourself to listen. "His heart was stopped for almost a minute before the doctor he paged got it started again with CPR. If she hadn't been so quick, he—"

"Who did he page?" The words are out of your mouth before you realize you're asking them. Cuddy looks taken aback the suddenness of your reaction, but it's impossible for you to care what she thinks of you right now. "He called someone before he—did it?"

At last, she walks the rest of the way into the room to face you, resting a hand on the back of your chair, near your shoulder. "He paged one of the doctors he's got competing for his fellowship. Amber Volakis, I think. You didn't know?"

Your answer comes out in a yell: "Of course I didn't know!"

You wonder if you'll hurt Cuddy by shouting at her—you don't care if you do; the idea is almost appealing—but she looks unfazed, as if this is no less than what she expected from you. "You want to know why he called her and not you," she says after a moment. "You want to know why he didn't think of you first, when he wanted someone who would care enough to come save him."

You stare mutely, pleadingly, up into her face.

Cuddy sighs as she pulls up the room's second chair and sits down beside you. "I don't know why," she says, and both of you are silent.

_[9:32 PM.]_

You couldn't bring yourself to look directly at his hand before, but now the burn seems to demand your gaze: an angry, dark red welt, shiny and raw. It's his left hand that's burned, you think to yourself dully, he used his left hand to—

_Wait_. Which hand does he need to use his cane? For a wild, panicked moment, you can't remember which leg has the limp; you can't think of what he looks like when he walks. Then it comes back: it's the right leg that had the infarction. He uses his right hand for his cane. The burn will hurt, but at least the pain won't keep him from walking.

He probably thought of that before he stuck the knife in, anyway. Far ahead of you, outsmarting you yet again. He's a brilliant man.

Except when he's a complete fool.

_[9:35 PM.]_

You've both been sitting there, gazing at him without speaking; now Cuddy breaks the silence. "You aren't planning on sitting here all night, are you?"

You look up, startled by the question. "Haven't thought about it. I just got here."

The look she gives you is skeptical, as if she wants to say something else, but you have other things on your mind. "Look, Cuddy, why do you…think he did this? I mean, what did he want to do?"

She smiles a little, for the first time. "It's House. Who knows what he wanted to do? He must've had some reason that made sense to _him_, but—"

"Of course he did. He had something to prove." Your voice echoes hollowly in your ears. "That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?"

"I meant—" What you meant was: what made him think it didn't matter if he lived or died? What made him decide that some stupid experiment, some stupid _puzzle_, was worth risking his life? Why doesn't he care about himself?

Why doesn't he understand that you do?

"I don't know what I meant," you say to Cuddy.

Another silence, then she glances at you. "What were you doing when I called you and told you what happened?"

"Getting ready to go home."

"You're all done for the night?"

What is she getting at? "Yes."

Cuddy stands up, and suddenly she's your boss again. "Then go _home_, Dr. Wilson."

"What?"

"You were about to leave when I told you about House. I knew you'd want to see him; now you have." The look she's giving you is almost the pitying one again, but there's something else in it too: something very much like impatience. "So why don't you go home, rest, and come back and see how he's doing in the morning."

You turn this over in your mind as you look up at her. "Are you saying…do you want to be alone with House, and that's why you're asking me to leave?"

"_No_," she replies, and the exasperation in her voice sounds genuine. "Can't you figure out that you're the one I'm trying to look out for?" She softens her tone. "Wilson. House is _unconscious_. He doesn't know you're here. He doesn't need you to sit with him all night."

Something in your mind isn't working right. You can understand Cuddy's words individually, but you can't put them together to understand what she's actually saying. "B-but," you stammer. "I'm…his friend."

"I know," says Cuddy, with surprising gentleness. "You are. Maybe his only friend. But that doesn't mean you have to sit at his bedside for twelve hours while everyone else goes home. He doesn't need that from you."

You stare at her.

"You want him to need you," Cuddy says, more bluntly. "And you give him whatever he needs. All the time." She walks to the door, then turns and fixes you with a look. "What has he done for _you_ lately?"

"I…he…" you falter, like a child caught in a lie, but Cuddy cuts you off.

"How much did he think about you when he decided to do this to himself? Did he wonder how you would feel?" She waits half a second for an answer that isn't going to come. "Maybe you weren't that high on his list of priorities after all."

She realizes that you can't say anything, that you're floundering, and once again she seems to soften. "Wilson…I know House is your best friend, and that means a lot to you. But it's not always clear how much it means to him." She pauses, and when you don't answer, she says, "I'm just suggesting that this one time, you try and see if he can manage without you."

As she turns and walks out, you think you hear her add something else. You can't be sure, but it sounds like, "And vice versa."


	2. 10:08 PM to 4:12 AM

12½ Hours

(Part Two: 10:08 PM-4:12 AM)

By taste of violets

Disclaimer: I don't own House. It belongs to FOX, David Shore, et al.

Editor's Note: Many thanks to callmejude of LiveJournal's lying_ink, who beta-read this story after inspiring it with her own lovely fic "The Hardest Part of This."

This fic takes place parallel to the events of the episode "97 Seconds" (episode 4x3). Please don't read it if you haven't seen the episode, because not only will the fic not make much sense, but I'd hate to spoil a good episode for you.

This is part two of four.

::

_[10:08 PM.]_

You haven't moved since Cuddy left. You're sitting as you were before, still staring at his hand.

You're thinking about how much time passed before he stuck the knife into the wall. Did he plan this before he did it? You picture him crouching next to the socket for minute after long minute, suspended in the limbo of indecision, before finally making up his mind. Is that how it went? Or did he do it all at once, without any forethought, without any fear?

You look again at the burn—on his left hand, his non-dominant hand, not the one that holds his cane and his medical tools and everything else he needs working fingers for—and you think about that for a while. You think about how often you've been amazed at the way House thinks multiple steps ahead of everyone else.

Then you think about him paging the fellowship candidate, Amber, before he stuck the knife in. You imagine her hurrying to his office, wondering what he could want, and then seeing him unconscious on the floor. You imagine her fleeting moment of panic, instantly suppressed, as she kneels, checks his pulse, begins CPR. Her mouth on his—his mouth—her mouth on—_stop_.

You can't imagine that part.

Rewind to House next to the socket. Pager in one hand, knife in the other. He hesitates, thinking…_calculating_…

"Oh yeah," you say to House's unconscious body, and even if he could hear you, you wouldn't try to hide the bitterness in your voice. "Yeah, you had time."

_[10:31 PM.]_

You think you see his finger twitch and you leap out of your chair, but it's a false alarm. Still, you wait and watch for a moment, just to be sure, before sitting down again.

_[10:43 PM.]_

"That was a really, really stupid fight we had," you tell him.

He lies there, unresponsive. It is one of the few moments in your life, you realize—feeling a very small smile creep onto your face—that you can say something like this to him without being hit with an acerbic retort.

"That said," you add, "you were still wrong."

Silence in reply. After a second, your smile dies away.

You miss the acerbity.

"All right, look," you say, trying not to feel like a fool for talking to an unconscious man this way, "I'm not _sorry_, exactly…but it was a pointless thing for us to fight about. I know you too well to think you'd lie to anyone about your views on the afterlife. Even a dying man for whom a lie would be an act of mercy."

You stop and let out a sigh, because you can't help imagining House calling you an idiot for saying this. It's all too easy to hear his voice in your mind: even when he's unconscious, there's no escaping House's scorn.

"But what I'm saying," you continue, looking down at your hands because it's easier than looking at his face, "is that even if I _was_ right, it was stupid to have the argument in the first place. It wasn't worth it." You glance up at him, as hard as it is. "Because…I keep thinking that maybe if we hadn't fought, you might not have thought you needed to do this. You might have thought about me, and maybe it would have occurred to you that I wouldn't want you to kill yourself to settle an argument." You pause, then, with difficulty, start again. "Maybe you'd have remembered that I…care about you."

And that's when you think you see it. A tiny movement, something just barely stirring, in House's face. Something like a miniscule twitch of his lip, the slightest, subtlest flaring of his nostrils—and then he's still again. But you're sure you saw it. A movement of his face.

As if he were laughing at you.

And suddenly you're extremely angry, and then just as suddenly you're extremely tired. Too tired to care anymore. You stand up and push the chair away.

"Go to hell," you tell his unhearing body. "Cuddy was right."

You walk out without looking back.

_[1:07 AM.]_

In your room, you're staring at the ceiling as you lie on your back in the hotel bed, feeling helpless and sick and scared.

You don't know if you've ever been farther from sleep.

Cuddy's words are still echoing in your ears, and as much as you try to ignore them, they refuse to go away: _You want him to need you. And you give him whatever he needs._

It reminds you of something House said to you once, when you were in the middle of a fight far bigger than the one you'd had today—when he found out about you and Grace. He'd called you a vampire. "You _eat_ neediness," he'd snarled at you.

"Lucky for you," you'd shot back, hoping you sounded glib enough that he wouldn't be able to hear the emotion behind your words. The truth was, you were hurt—and what was more, you were afraid. Afraid that this was it, that this last blow was more than your stupid, screwed-up excuse for a friendship could take. Afraid that House would never forgive you; that this time you'd lost him for good.

You had no way of knowing, back then, the strange, strained forms your friendship had yet to take: the fights you had yet to have, the ways you had yet to betray each other, the contortions you would pull yourself into to make everything okay again. The things you would do for him…

And this is how he repays you? You roll over onto your stomach and punch your pillow in frustration.

Cuddy _was_ right. What has he done for you? You were willing to forgive him anything, _anything_, as long as it meant you wouldn't lose him—and now he almost kills himself for the sake of some stupid argument, without a thought for you, without the slightest consideration for what it would mean for you if he died.

Doesn't he know? Doesn't he _know_…?

"God damn it, House," you say into the darkness of your room, "you haven't been worth this."

You roll over, pull the covers up, and try to think of nothing as you will yourself to fall asleep.

_[4:12 AM.]_

You wake up suddenly, panicked and alone, still mired in the cobweb remnants of a nightmare as you hear yourself saying aloud, "The piano—"

_He might not be able to play the piano anymore_.

Sitting upright in bed, you wait for your heartbeat to slow down. The same words keep running through your head over and over—_the piano, what if he can't play the piano anymore_—but you try to ignore them, rubbing your hands over your face and giving your head a jerk as if to shake the panic out of it. Just a dream, you think, just a stupid dream born of tonight's anxiety; your subconscious is working off its worry. But you have to remember what Cuddy said: House doesn't need this from you, this level of concern. And if _he_ didn't consider whether injuring his hand would keep him from playing the piano, why should you? He didn't think of you. Why should you think of him?

These are the things you tell yourself as you wait in the dark for your heart rate to slow. But even though you keep waiting, it doesn't slow. In the surreal, dreamlike shadows of too-early morning, you find yourself thinking of the time House put amphetamines in your coffee: it's the same, the frantic pounding of your heart, _thud thud thud thud_ in your eardrums, your fingertips, throughout your entire body. You think you can taste blood in the back of your mouth, a taste like copper and bitterness and fear. You take a deep breath, and then another.

_What has he done for you lately?_ the memory of Cuddy's voice asks you, challenges you. What has he done for you to make him worth all this? What has he done to show you that he cares as much as you do?

And of course you know the answer: nothing at all. He's done little to prove that he cares about his _own_ life, let alone that he could be bothered to care about yours. You know that beyond any doubt.

But now, with the strange, sudden insomniac's certainty that comes in the hours before dawn, you also know that somehow—for some reason that you couldn't explain to anyone, not to Cuddy and not to yourself and certainly not to _him_—that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter why you're at his side. It just matters that you are.

It doesn't matter if he gives a damn whether you're next to him when he wakes up or not. It just matters that when he opens his eyes, you are the first thing he sees.

It matters to _you_.

You switch on the hotel desk lamp and, blinking in the harsh light, look at the red digits of the alarm clock. 4:26 AM.

There's no time to make coffee. You don't really think you'd need it anyway.

You throw aside the covers and start looking for a clean shirt, or one that's clean enough, anyway. You'll make it to the hospital by five.


	3. 5:05 AM to 6:48 AM

12½ Hours

(Part Three: 5:05 AM-6:48 AM)

By taste of violets

Disclaimer: I don't own House. It belongs to FOX, David Shore, et al.

Editor's Note: Many thanks to callmejude of LiveJournal's lying_ink, who beta-read this story after inspiring it with her own lovely fic "The Hardest Part of This."

This fic takes place parallel to the events of the episode "97 Seconds" (episode 4x3). Please don't read it if you haven't seen the episode, because not only will the fic not make much sense, but I'd hate to spoil a good episode for you.

This is part three of four.

::

_[5:05 AM.]_

Princeton-Plainsboro in the early hours is full of the people known to you, in the distant former life that you led until a quarter after nine last night, as "the family." They come in all varieties: empty-eyed young women holding their dying children's hands; brothers and sisters, once estranged, now keeping silent vigil over their parents' bedsides; middle-aged men looking shell-shocked and haggard-faced on their thirty-third hour without sleep, pacing back and forth or sitting collapsed with their heads in their hands outside their wives' curtained rooms.

During the countless days and nights when you strode through these hallways as Dr. James Wilson, respected oncologist, you generally dealt with these people only when you had to. What little you could do to comfort them, you did, and the rest of the time you simply hoped they would stay out of the way of treatment.

But that was yesterday, when you were a different person, a capable professional with a nametag and a white lab coat. That was your old life. Now you're just another exhausted-looking man in an old jacket and worn-out shirt, hair mussed and shadows under your eyes, your face twisted with anxiety as you jog through the hallways to his room. These people you used to try to avoid—these anonymous figures with blank eyes and desperate expressions, too engrossed in their personal hells to sleep or eat—they look familiar to you now. You recognize their faces as the same one you see when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the glass doors as you run down the hall.

These people have become _your_ people. You're part of "the family" now.

_[5:08 AM.]_

He looks worse than he did yesterday.

It's the first thing you think when you open the door to his room, and for a moment you're too shocked to take another step toward him. Could that really be him, with the face as white as the sheets he's lying on? Is that him, with the welt on his hand the color of blood?

His pale, drawn face is hard enough to look at, but it's the burn that unnerves you the most. As you enter the room and take your place in the chair beside him, you wonder how you could have failed to notice yesterday how truly horrible it looks. The burn is enormous. It covers his palm entirely, curls around his fingers like a coat of thick scarlet paint, and stretches past his thumb onto the back of his hand, merciless and ugly and terrible.

"_Idiot_," you say aloud, and your voice doesn't sound nearly as steady as you'd like it to. "If it had been _me_ you'd called," you tell him furiously, "I would never have let you—"

And there you stop, because that's when it hits you at last: maybe he knew. Maybe you _were_ the first person he thought of. And he decided not to page you not because he didn't think you would care, but because he knew you would care too much to allow him to get his way this time.

Because he knew that if he paged you, you would drop everything to come running to his office—just like you've dropped everything now, to sit by his side and wait for his eyes to open. He _knows_ you. You would have reached him before he even put the knife into the socket. You would have ruined everything.

You wish he'd let you.

You're reminded of something else Cuddy said last night: when she told you to go home, she said, "He doesn't know you're here."

You don't think she was right about that.

"I think you knew where I'd be," you tell him.

He knew you wouldn't be able to ignore him. He knew you would be sitting at his side, waiting as long as it takes for him to wake up. When he opens his eyes, he won't be surprised to see that you're here; what would surprise him is if you _weren't_.

As usual, he knew it all along.

"You win, House," you say to him.

His face remains as still as stone.

With nothing left to do, you begin to wait.

_[5:31 AM.]_

You begin thinking about what you'll say to him when he wakes up. There are two things that come to mind right away that you might say. One is easy, one is hard.

You wonder which one you'll choose.

_[5:42 AM.]_

"I'm going to get a cup of coffee," you tell his body. "Don't wake up while I'm gone."

But it would be just like him to do exactly that, so you run all the way to the machine and back. When you return, he hasn't moved.

But he will soon. Won't he?

He _is_ going to wake up, isn't he?

_[5:58 AM.]_

Your heart is beginning to pound too fast again, and you think about saying a prayer. You haven't in years, of course. You aren't even sure you still remember how. But if there is such a thing as a time to pray, this is it. If there is anyone who listens to prayers, you could use them now.

But it's House you're sitting next to, and for that reason, you don't do it.

You just sit quite still, and you realize that when you're quiet enough, you can hear him breathing.

So you stay very quiet, and you listen to him breathe until finally you start to feel like you can breathe again, too.

_[6:01 AM.]_

You hear the door open behind you, and you turn around to see a young, slightly sleepy-looking nurse stepping into the room. "Oh, Dr. Wilson!" she says, clearly taken by surprise to find someone present other than her patient.

"Hello," you say, smiling at her as best as you can manage. It's with some embarrassment that you realize you don't know her name. You're fairly sure she's new here, but that doesn't provide you with much of an excuse, considering she clearly already knows who you are. Or maybe she just knows who _House_ is, as everyone at Princeton-Plainsboro does, and she's heard that if anyone is seen voluntarily in his company, it's you.

"He hasn't regained consciousness at any time in the past hour, has he?" the nurse asks you.

"Uh, no. He hasn't." A thought occurs to you. "Listen, um—could you check on the condition of Dr. House's patient for me, please? The last diagnosis that I heard was that it might be cancer, and I may need to talk to his team later."

"I'll find out right away," says the nurse immediately (almost _too_ eagerly; presumably she hasn't yet met the conscious version of House and learned to dislike him), and hurries out of the room.

You wait as the minutes pass. "The things I do for you," you remark to House, just to fill in the time.

_[6:13 AM.]_

The door slides open and the nurse comes back in. "Dr. Wilson, I checked up on both of Dr. House's patients, and I'm afraid—"

"Both?"

"Right, both. There's the case you referred to earlier, the patient with spinal muscular atrophy, and there's also the patient who—" you see her throw a glance in House's direction, "—who…suffered an electrical shock…after being injured in a car accident."

Oh God. How could you have forgotten what started all of this? "The second patient—what's his status?"

The nurse glances at House again and lowers her voice almost to a whisper, as if not wanting him to hear her. "He's dying, Dr. Wilson."

You don't say anything.

"They're doing everything they can, of course, but his internal injuries were so severe before the electrical trauma… It's most likely a matter of hours."

You can't say anything.

"As for the first patient—"

"Never mind," you interrupt, and your voice is too loud in the suddenly small room. The nurse looks at you, startled. "I'll consult with Dr. Cuddy about the case later," you continue, your voice ringing like an unwelcome stranger's in your ears. "Thanks for your help."

"Oh…right," she says, confused. "Okay, well, I'll…I'll check back again later." She backs out of the room and walks away down the hall.

_[6:16 AM.]_

You sit extremely still and watch her leave. Once you see her head around the corner and out of sight, you get up and go across the hall. You walk as steadily as you can into the men's restroom, enter the closest stall, lean over the toilet, and throw up.

When you're finished, you have to wait another minute for the tremors to subside. Then you exit the stall, wash your hands, rinse out your mouth, wash your face. Then you wash your face again, especially around your eyes, and run your hands through your hair until it starts to look a little better.

You stare at your reflection in the mirror. You don't look so exhausted anymore.

You go back to House's room. You don't sit down in the chair; instead, you stand right next to his bed, above the pillow on which rests his haggard face.

"Before you did one of the stupidest things you've done in your long and varied career of idiotic personal decisions," you inform him, "the last thing you heard me say was, 'Yes, Detroit, the afterlife. Same thing.' I'm not going to let something that ridiculous be the last words you ever hear from me."

When you stop talking, you hear him breathe, which is almost like agreeing with you.

"_You_ weren't in a car accident before you did this. Regular tormenting of your liver aside, you don't have any internal injuries. You aren't the same as your patient, and you _aren't_ going to die."

He keeps breathing.

"All right, as long as we're clear," you say, and sit back down in the chair beside him again.

_[6:48 AM.]_

His burned hand hurts to look at, but you keep looking at it anyway. For a brief moment you even reach your hand out toward his, thinking of—of doing what? Of examining the welt on his palm? Of touching his fingers? Of simply laying your hand over his? But then you catch yourself and pull your hand away.

"You're an idiot," you tell him instead. That's the easy thing to say to him, so easy that you say it again. "You're an idiot," you say, "but—"

But—

—No. You can't do it. There's the easy to thing to say and the hard one, and that's the hard one. And you can't do it, not now. Not yet.

You keep waiting.


	4. 7:34 to 9:47 AM

12½ Hours

(Part Four: 7:34 AM-9:47 AM)

By taste of violets

Disclaimer: I don't own House. It belongs to FOX, David Shore, et al. In addition, the dialogue at 8:03 AM and 9:47 AM was not written by me; it was drawn from the original episode, written by Russell Friend and Garrett Lerner.

Editor's Note: Many thanks to callmejude of LiveJournal's lying_ink, who beta-read this story after inspiring it with her own lovely fic "The Hardest Part of This."

This fic takes place parallel to the events of the episode "97 Seconds" (episode 4x3). Please don't read it if you haven't seen the episode, because not only will the fic not make much sense, but I'd hate to spoil a good episode for you.

This is part four of four.

::

_[7:34 AM.]_

You hear the door slide open behind you, and you turn around expecting the nameless nurse again. You're very wrong.

"What a surprise," says Dr. Cuddy dryly, her dark curls bouncing as she walks into the room. "Good _morning_, Dr. Wilson."

"Good morning, Cuddy," you say weakly.

She studies your face with interest. "Actually, I _am_ surprised. You look like you might have been home in the past twelve hours."

The two of you exchange poker faces. You aren't telling her anything. "Dr. Cuddy, is there something I can—"

She cuts you off by slapping a thick manila folder into your hands. "This is the file on House's cancer patient," she says. "Who, according to the latest test, is probably not a cancer patient after all." She allows herself a small sigh.

"I see."

"_Somebody_ has to diagnose him. I need you to go meet House's team by eight o'clock and lead them in coming up with something new."

Her eyes follow your gaze. It leads to House's face.

"Yes, Wilson," she says flatly, "I am telling you to leave him. Possibly for as long as an entire hour."

"Are you going to stay with him?"

"As a matter of fact, I was actually planning on spending my morning running a hospital." She raises her eyebrows. "Eight o'clock." She turns, ready to leave.

"Wait."

She glances back at you. You swallow before speaking. "Do you know anything about House's…other patient? The one with the knife?"

Her face softens as she looks at you. "The last I heard," she says, "he was still alive."

You say nothing.

"They aren't the same, you know."

"I know."

A moment passes. Then Cuddy says abruptly, "His team is counting on you. They won't do anything without you."

"Eight o'clock," you tell her, "I'll be there."

"Yes," she says, "I know you will." Her high heels click against the floor as she leaves.

_[8:02 AM.]_

From outside in the hall you can hear House's band of fellowship hopefuls exchanging theories about their boss, speculating on what happened and why. The conversation sounds like a condensed version of the thoughts that have been chasing each other through your head nonstop ever since the call from Cuddy last night. You open the door just as the blonde fellowship candidate, Amber, is saying, "I _assume_ because he—"

"Don't assume anything," you interrupt her as you walk in. It's all you have to offer; it's the best advice you've come up with in all the years you've known House. "Don't fall into that trap."

Another doctor asks, "Is he okay?"

It takes you a moment to think of something you can say. "Burned his hand pretty good." What can you tell them? "His heart stopped for nearly a minute. Your…cohort managed to restart it." You don't know what you're saying. You're on doctor autopilot. "But…he…has not regained consciousness."

They stare up at you from their desks, like schoolchildren looking trustingly at their teacher. This is not where you're supposed to be. Can't they tell by looking at your face?

Just keep talking. "So—since I have you all here, we should probably talk about your actual patient." Cuddy would be proud of you. "Clear fluid from the lungs indicates that it's probably not cancer, so it would be nice if we could come up with new idea."

Nobody says anything. You wait for someone to break the silence, but not one doctor speaks as they stare uneasily around the room at each other.

Can they see how lost you are?

Can they see how much you need him?

_[8:41 AM.]_

In the end, the diagnosis is eosinophilic pneumonia. It's not ideal, but it's the best anyone on the team could come up with. You started the patient on cyclophosphamide, because it was what House would do. What you want now is a cup of coffee.

But you look into his room before you get it, just in case he's awake.

He isn't.

_[8:59 AM.]_

You're halfway through your coffee when the door opens. This time, it's the nurse from this morning. "Hello again, Dr. Wilson," she says with a little smile, sliding the door shut.

There's something you don't like about the amused, almost patronizing way she says it. It's as if she finds it funny that you're still here, three hours after the first time you saw each other.

You were sitting when she first opened the door, but the tone of her voice drives you to stand up and face her. "Hello."

"Has he been conscious, as far as you know, since—?"

"No," you reply succinctly.

"All right." She makes a tiny note on her clipboard, and then looks back up at you. "Dr. Wilson? There's…something else."

"Yes?"

"It's Dr. House's other patient, the one who was in the car accident." Just like before, she lowers her voice to a solicitous whisper: "He's dead."

Involuntarily, your muscles acting independently of any thought process, you turn around and look at House.

As you watch him, you see his throat move as he breathes. You see the first few hints of color in his face.

He no longer looks like the corpse he resembled at five o'clock this morning.

He looks, you realize for the first time, like he's going to be okay.

You turn back to the nurse, whose name you don't know and don't want to know, who can take her damn clipboard and her concerned little whisper and go fuck herself for all you care, and you pin her to the spot with a look that even Cuddy couldn't imitate.

"Get out of here," you tell the nurse. "I'm taking care of this."

The nurse actually takes a step backward. She's far too new to know how to handle open insurrection. "Are…are you sure?"

You walk across the room and slide the door open for her. "Positive."

She stares at you. You nod curtly at the open door.

"Well, all right," she says finally. "I—okay. Thank you, Dr. Wilson."

"You're welcome."

As she leaves, you shut the door behind her. Then you turn back to House, hands on your hips.

"House, the time is currently," —you check your watch— "9:02 AM. I am going to stand here," you inform him, "until you wake up. I am not going to leave. I'm not even going to sit down. I'm not going to do anything but stand here and wait until your eyes open." You take a sip of coffee. "So get going."

_[9:13 AM.]_

You finish your coffee. You wish you had another cup, but you aren't going to leave, not now.

_[9:21 AM.]_

You think his face is starting to look a little less ashen than before.

You don't sit down.

_[9:33 AM.]_

His breathing begins to sound deeper and easier.

You don't sit down.

_[9:45 AM.]_

His left hand twitches; then after a moment, it twitches again.

You don't realize until several seconds afterward that you were holding your breath between twitches.

_[9:46 AM.]_

His head moves.

You don't.

_[9:47 AM.]_

Slowly, House opens his eyes.

And suddenly there they are, in your mind, the two things you could say to him. The easy one and the hard one. And you won't know which one you're going to say until you say it.

He's looking at the ceiling. You open your mouth.

"You're an idiot," you say. "You nearly killed yourself."

His gaze drops from the ceiling down onto your face. He looks exactly as unsurprised as you expected.

His voice is a hoarse croak, a dreadful parody of his usual sardonic growl, as he rasps, "That was the whole idea."

"You _wanted_ to kill yourself?"

Before the awful possibility can even begin to sink in, he corrects you: "I wanted to _nearly_ kill myself." He takes a slow breath, like he's still not sure how to do it and needs to practice. Then he asks, "Is he…better?"

And that's it. Because he's House, that's all you'll get out of him. You can ask him why he did it; you can ask him what he saw—it doesn't matter; he won't answer. You can interrogate him, threaten him, even attempt to reason with him—and you do, you try again and again—and he won't answer. "House, you gotta talk about this," you tell him, but he ignores you and talks about the patient instead. Obsessing over his puzzles, like any other day, like the past twelve and a half hours didn't even happen.

And now you know chose wrong when you said the easy thing instead of the hard one. Maybe if you'd said the other thing, the thing that's still hanging silently in the air between you and him, still waiting for you to say it—as it's been waiting for twelve and a half hours, and before that, for twelve and a half years—maybe if you'd said that, you could have surprised him. And maybe he would have listened, and he would have answered.

But you took the easy way out, and now it's too late.

So at last you give up. "Just looking at you hurts," you tell him, because it's true, and you turn away from him and busy yourself with his chart, like doctors do. "I'm going to order up some extra pain meds."

"I love you," he says.

And all of a sudden you feel unspeakably tired, maybe more tired than you've ever felt in your life, and you wonder how you could possibly be surprised. You wonder how you didn't see it coming that he would take that thing that's waited so long, that thing that you've wanted to say and tried to say and couldn't say even when you needed to most—that _thing_ that is the reason not just for the past dozen hours but for the past dozen years of your life—and he would pull it out of the air and throw it away. Toss it out with no more effort than any of his other quips, just another joke about himself and his pain, with no room in between for you. You can't think of anything more predictably House-like than that.

Except—

Everybody lies. That's one of House's rules that he likes to apply to everyone but himself. With House, what's remarkable isn't the fact that he lies.

It's that every once in a while, he tells the truth.

So you give half a shrug so he'll know you heard him, and you scribble on his chart so he won't see your face. And then, just for a second, you glance up at him.

He's looking back at you.

Watching and waiting. Like you waited for him.

Your eyes meet, and his tell you absolutely nothing. You'll never be sure, you realize. He isn't going to say anything more than he has, and there's no point in arguing. You simply have to accept that there are things you cannot know.

But you can hope.

And so you take the memory of what he said and fold it away, hide it in a corner in the back of your mind where no one will know about it but you. Nobody else could understand, but nobody else has to.

When you put down House's chart and look at him again, his eyes are closed. His breathing sounds deep and regular: he's fallen asleep.

You reach out your right hand slowly, cautiously. And then, very gently, you cover his burned, scarred hand with yours.

He doesn't pull away.

You stay that way for a long time.

::

::

[note: Thanks to all who followed this story and left comments and encouragement in their reviews. I was especially flattered by a request for a sequel! But since my aim in writing this fic was to retell a specific episode from Wilson's perspective, the end of the episode means the end of the fic. I'll remember your encouragement the next time I set out to write for House, though. Thanks again to everyone for reading—please leave a review if you have time—and I hope you enjoyed it.]


End file.
